Lightweight password hashing scheme for embedded systems

Passwords constitute the main mean for authentication in computer systems. In order to maintain the user-related information at the service provider end, password hashing schemes (PHS) are utilized. The limited and old-fashioned solutions led the international cryptographic community to conduct the Password Hashing Competition (PHC). The competition will propose a small portfolio of schemes suitable for widespread usage until 2015. Embedded systems form a special application domain, utilizing devices with inherent computational limitations. Lightweight cryptography focuses in designing schemes for such devices and targets moderate levels of security. In this paper, a lightweight poly PHS suitable for lightweight cryptography is presented. At first, we design two lightweight versions of the PHC schemes Catena and PolyPassHash. Then, we integrate them and implement the proposed scheme – called LightPolyPHS. A fair comparison with similar proposals on mainstream computer is presented

Relevance of Induced Gauge Interactions in Decoherence

Decoherence in quantum cosmology is shown to occur naturally in the presence of induced geometric gauge interactions associated with particle production.A new 'gauge '-variant form of the semiclassical Einstein equations is also presented which makes the non-gravitating character of the vacuum polarisation energy explicit.Comment: 10 pages, LATEX, IC/94/16

Family-based pediatric weight management interventions in US primary care settings targeting children ages 6-12 years old: A systematic review guided by the RE-AIM framework.

Obesity is a pandemic that disproportionately affects children from vulnerable populations in the USA. Current treatment approaches in primary care settings in the USA have been reported to be insufficient at managing pediatric obesity, primarily due to implementation challenges for healthcare systems and barriers for families. While the literature has examined the efficacy of pediatric obesity interventions focused on internal validity, it lacks sufficient reporting and analysis of external validity necessary for successful translation to primary care settings. We conducted a systematic review of the primary-care-setting literature from January 2007 to March 2020 on family-based pediatric weight management interventions in both English and/or Spanish for children ages 6-12 years in the USA using the Reach, Efficacy/Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework. A literature search, using PRISMA guidelines, was conducted in January 2022 using the following electronic databases: Medline Ovid, Embase, and Cochrane Library. 22 270 records were screened, and 376 articles were reviewed in full. 184 studies were included. The most commonly reported dimensions of the RE-AIM framework were Reach (65%), Efficacy/Effectiveness (64%), and Adoption (64%), while Implementation (47%) and Maintenance (42%) were less often reported. The prevalence of reporting RE-AIM construct indicators ranged greatly, from 1% to 100%. This systematic review underscores the need for more focus on external validity to guide the development, implementation, and dissemination of future pediatric obesity interventions based in primary care settings. It also suggests conducting additional research on sustainable financing for pediatric obesity interventions

A Fast Automaton-Based Method for Detecting Anomalous Program Behaviors

Forrest et al introduced a new intrusion detection approach that identifies anomalous sequences of system calls executed by programs. Since their work, anomaly detection on system call sequences has become perhaps the most successful approach for detecting novel intrusions. A natural way for learning sequences is to use a finite-state automaton (FSA). However, previous research seemed to indicate that FSA-learning is computationally expensive, that it cannot be completely automated, or that the space usage of the FSA may be excessive. We present a new approach in this paper that overcomes these difficulties. Our approach builds a compact FSA in a fully automatic and efficient manner, without requiring access to source code for programs. The space requirements for the FSA is low --- of the order of a few kilobytes for typical programs. The FSA uses only a constant time per system call during the learning as well as detection period. This factor leads to low overheads for intrusion detection. Unlike many of the previous techniques, our FSA-technique can capture both short term and long term temporal relationships among system calls, and thus perform more accurate detection. For instance, the FSA can capture common program structures such as branches, joins, loops etc. This enables our approach to generalize and predict future behaviors from past behaviors. For instance, if a program executed a loop once in an execution, the FSA approach can generalize and predict that the same loop may be executed zero or more times in subsequent executions. As a result, the training periods needed for our FSA based approach are shorter. Moreover, false positives are reduced without increasing the likelihood of missing attacks. This paper describes our FSA based technique and presents a ..